Welcome! Follow me on twitter at @johnrlottjr or at https://crimeresearch.org. Please e-mail questions to johnrlott@crimeresearch.org.

6/25/2014

Isn't it enough that Lois Lerner was using the IRS to target conservatives? Now it turns out that she was also targeting Republican politicians

From Fox News:

Congressional investigators have uncovered emails showing ex-IRS official Lois Lerner targeted a sitting Republican senator for a proposed internal audit, a discovery one GOP lawmaker called "shocking." . . . .The emails appear to show Lerner mistakenly received an invitation intended for Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in 2012.The event organizer, whose name is not disclosed, apparently offered to pay for Grassley's wife to attend the event, which caught Lerner's attention. The December 2012 emails show that in response, Lerner suggested to an IRS colleague that the case be referred for an audit."Looked like they were inappropriately offering to pay for his wife. Perhaps we should refer to Exam?" she wrote.Her colleague, though, pushed back on the idea, saying an offer to pay for his wife is "not prohibited on its face." There is no indication from the emails that Lerner pursued the issue any further.Republicans pointed to the exchange as yet another example of Lerner using her position in the Exempt Organizations unit to apply scrutiny to conservatives."We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking," Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said in a statement."At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights." . . .